This MAPs event is organized by artists Abbey Skojec and David Hellams, and will take place in the gallery at Nashville’s Fort Houston in July 2019. We expect this to be an intimate and experimental show with 15 or fewer pods. These MAPs will be on display 2 weeks total, but with special opening and closing weekend events. Special thanks to MAPs creator @tonyyoungblood for advice, support, and the gift of MAPs!

The Crappy Magic Experience is a multi-volume art event by Nashville artists David Hellams and David King. In 2016, Crappy Magic hosted two shows at Seed Space. The first featured bins full of discarded consumer goods that attendees were encouraged to play with, reconfigure, and reconsider. At the second event, artists donated reconfigured consumer goods to be auctioned off. Then they made infomercials to induce people to buy stuff.

Crappy Magic will return on Saturday, April 1 at abrasiveMedia, and they want your weird stuff!

As the contributing artist guidelines state, your item “can be a hand-crafted artwork; or it can be a ‘found’ object.” If you like, you can make an accompanying sales video. You can even borrow an item already donated to Crappy Magic and make a video for that.

Produced by Tyler Blankenship, Modular Art Pods at Queen Ave will be the first independently-curated MAPs show. I’ll be bringing my electrical box pod, but I (Tony Youngblood) was not otherwise involved with the curation or production. What the heck are Modular Art Pods? Learn more here.

The show takes place Friday, November 11 through Saturday, November 12, 6pm to 10pm each night. Saturday’s event will coincide with the East Side Art Stumble.

Tyler told me about some of the amazing pods and performances going down, and I’m incredibly excited! You’ll get to wade through a mini ball pit, explore a world made out of clay, witness an artist performing in a dress made out of barbed-wire and chicken-wire, and so much more!

Janelle Bonfour-Mikes will perform in a dress made from barbed-wire and chicken-wire

The show will feature approximately 14 pods and 10 performances. Participants include:

It’s time for the second edition of the Poddy Awards, the contest where we ask pod artists to vote on their favorite pods. About half of the OZ Art Fest pod builders responded to our call. Results are below.

Winners of “Best Overall Pod” and categories other than best-in-each-level will receive a 3D printed award. Best-in-each-level winners will receive a certificate.

The class is called “Papercraft Automata” and is open to students ages 11 and up. (Younger students are welcome with parental accompaniment.) If the first class is successful, I hope to make it a continuing series.

Using Rob Ives’ wonderful paper automata designs, I will teach you the basics of mechanical movement. Each class will explore a different mechanical movement concept including crank sliders, scotch yokes, geneva cranks, gear boxes, worm gears, rack and pinions, and more

In the first class, we will learn all about cams by building the Hungry T-Rex Dinosaur! This is a great introduction to mechanical movement because the kit provides several sets of cams that change the dinosaur’s animation.

Cams have been around for hundreds of years. They are the main mechanical principal behind self-writing, self-drawing, and music-playing automata such as the one featured in the movie Hugo. There’s so much you can do with this one simple concept!